Quotations, Sayings,
Poems, Proverbs, Humor

Compiled by Karen and Michael Garofalo, Red Bluff, California

"One of the most delightful things about gardening is the freemasonry it
gives with
other gardeners, and the interest and pleasure all gardeners get by visiting other
people's gardens. We all have a lot to learn and in every new garden there is a
chance of finding inspiration - new flowers, different arrangement or fresh treatment
for old subjects. Even if it is a garden you know by heart there are twelve months
in the year and every month means a different garden, and the discovery of things
unexpected all the rest of the year."
- Margery Fish, We Made a Garden, 1956

"But friendship is precious, not only in
the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement
the greater part of life is sunshine."- Thomas Jefferson

"Friends are the sunshine of life." - John Hay

"A friendship can weather most things and
thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and
small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out
completely."- Pam Brown

"But friendship is the breathing rose, with
sweets in every fold."- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"If your trusted and people will allow you to share their
inner garden.. what better a gift."- Fred Rogers

"Wishing to be friends is quick
work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit."- Aristotle

"Friendship is a sheltering tree."- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Let us be grateful to people who
make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."- Marcel Proust

"A single rose can be my garden... a single
friend, my world."- Leo Buscaglia

"Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need
most."- American Proverb

"Friends are like money, easier made than kept." - Samuel Butler

"Friends and good manners will carry you
where money won't go."- Margaret Walker

"Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a
special face for each friend."- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"True friendship comes when silence between two people is
comfortable." - Dave Tyson Gentry

"There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of
pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him,
understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes
between two friends. These are the moments worth living."- Don Marquis

"A friendship founded on business is better
than a business founded on friendship."- John D. Rockefeller

"The World is so empty if one thinks
only of the mountains, rivers, and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"If instead of a gem, or
even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a
friend, that would be giving as the angels give."- George MacDonald

"It's the flock, the grove, that
matters. Our responsibility is to species, not to specimens; to communities, not to individuals."- Sara Stein

"If you make it plain you like people, it's
hard for them to resist liking you back."- Lois McMaster Bujold

"You don't have a garden just for
yourself. You have it to share."- Augusta Carter

"Being friendless taught me how to be a friend.
Funny how that works."- Colleen Wainwright

"A friend is a
person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived
at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those
undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men
never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with
which one chemical atom meets another."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say
what we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling
other people to stammer that they loved them." - Christopher Morley

"Love is like the wild-rose briar;
Friendship is like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?"- Emily Brontë

"If the earth is man's extended body,
to be loved and respected as one's own body, those who do no greening of themselves will hardly bring about the greening of America. The idea of 'greening' involves color, flowering, freshness of spring, and, above all, respect for what is organic and vegetative as distinct from the mechanical and metallic."- Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, 1968,
p. 111

"You ask how many friends I have?
Water and stone, bamboo and pine.
The moon rising over the eastern hill is a joyful comrade.
Besides these five companions, what other pleasure should I ask? "- Yon Sun-do (1587-1671), Korean Poet, Sigo

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed" - Carl Jung

"The language of friendship
is not words but meanings."- Henry David Thoreau

"The true spirit of conversation
consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it."- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

"Best friends are made are made through smiles and tears, and sometimes that
fades away through miles and years." - Arnold McCuller

"It takes a long time to grow an old friend." - John Leonard

"Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your
friends." - Czech Proverb

"This communicating of a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects;
for it redoubleth joy, and cutteth griefs in half." - Francis Bacon

"How can those who do not garden, who
have no lot in the great fraternity of those who watch the changing year as it affects the earth and its growth, how can they keep warm their hearts in winter?"- Francis King

"I've learned that things change, people change, and it doesn't mean you
forget the past or try to cover it up. It simply means you move on and treasure
the memories." - Alicia Boxer

"A garden is a public service and
having one a public duty.
It is a man's contribution to the community."- Richardson Wright, Truly Rural, 1922

"To know someone here or there with
whom you canfeel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed - that can make this life a garden."
- Goethe

"Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed its the only thing that ever has."- Margaret Mead

"But friendship is precious, not only
in the shade, but in the sunshine of life;and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."- Thomas Jefferson

"That which is not good for the
beehive cannot be good for the bees."- Marcus Aurelius

"Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must
have somebody to divide it with." - Mark Twain

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an
opportunity." - Kahil Gibran

"Friendship without self interest is one of the rare and beautiful things in
life." - James Francis Byrnes

"To love and be loved is to feel the
sun from both sides."- David Viscott

"May good luck be your friend, and whatever you do, and may trouble be always
a stranger to you." - Irish Blessing

"Aren't gardening people the happiest,
friendliest, and most generous people you know? Why do you suppose gardening is the #1 hobby in America? Why are there so many people across the state waiting in line to become Master Gardeners or joining the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs, individually, as couples, or as a youth? Why are so many millions of dollars spent in gardening retail stores every year? Gardening touches everyone in some way, be it beauty, color, solitude, food, memories, therapy, land value, exercise (some of the best), to attract wildlife or just the thrill of making something grow. Its a great
way to have quality time with your family and friends."
- The
Gardener's Touch Sonya Robinson

"The community stagnates without the
impulse of the individual.
The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community."- William James

"To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing" - Lilian Whiting

"Friendship and money: oil and water."- Mario Puzo

"I give to thee great gardens, with
trees and vines in the temple of Atuma, I give to thee lands with olive trees in the city of On. I have furnished them with
gardeners, and many men to make ready oil of Egypt for kindling the lamps of thy noble temple.
I give to thee trees and wood, date palms, incense, and lotus, rushes, grasses, and flowers of every land, to set before thy fair face."- Rameses III, 1155 BCE

"The finest kind of friendship is between two people who
expect a great deal of each other, but never ask it." - Syvia Bremer

"The most I can do for my
friend is simply be his friend."- Henry David Thoreau

"With fronds like you, who needs
anemones."

"Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling
as any other fragile and precious things." - Randolph S. Bourne

"If you want one year of prosperity,
grow grain.
If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees.
If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people." - Chinese Proverb

"Nothing but heaven itself
is better than a friend who is really a friend."- Plautus

"And Pooh said to Piglet "Life is so much friendlier with
two." - A.A.Miline

"A friend is a gift you give yourself." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"Friendship is Love, without his wings."- Lord Byron

"Hold a friend's hand through times of trial,
Let her find love through a hug and a smile,
But also know when it is time to go
For each and every one of us must learn to grow." - Sharon A. Heilbrunn

"Treasure each other in the recognition that we do not know how long we shall
have each other." - Joshua Loth Liebman

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us, as the
confidence of their help."- Epicurus

"Friends know what you want them to know about you. Best
friends know what you don't even know about yourself. And True friends help you
build yourself from all they know" - Jessica Spellman

"I will say leave a good quarter of
the time for
feast and celebration or your soul will die."- Francois Monnet

"It is wise to apply the oil
of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship."- Colette

"The object in America is to avoid
contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends. Here you have a million crabs living in a million crevices. ... But the garden's greatest benefit, I feel, as not relief to the eyes, but to make the eyes sees our neighbors."- Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks

"Fame is the scentless sunflower, with
gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the rose, with sweets in every fold." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The best time to make
friends is before you need them."- Ethel Barrymore

"Cherish the friend who
tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie."- Robert Brault

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship
authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you
come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy
become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to
learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell
them."- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny
without leaving some mark on it forever." - Francois Mocuriac

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still
likes you." - Elbert Hubard

"I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods
when I nod; my shadow does that much better."- Plutarch

"Go often to the house of a friend;
for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow." - Swedish Proverbs

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Walk beside me and be my friend." - Albert Camus

"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is
seldom known until it be lost." - Charles Caleb Colton

"In everyone's life, at some time, our
inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another
human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner
spirit."- Albert Schweitzer

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...
It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to
survival." - C. S. Lewis

"The best things that can come
out of the gardenare gifts for other people."- Jamie Jobb

"Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for
their labour.
For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow.
But woe to him that is alone when he falleth;
For he hath not another to help him up." - Ecclesiastes

"A garden is a friend you can visit any time."

"Make new friends but keep the old, some are Silver and others
are Gold" - Girl Scout Motto

"A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when
my memory fails."- Donna Roberts

"A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be
anywhere else." - Len Wein

"Friends are like the pillars on a
porch. Sometimes they hold you up, sometimes they lean on you, and sometimesit's just enough to know that they are standing by."- Author Unknown

"Friends are flowers in life's garden."

"True friendship is never serene." - Mariede Svign

"I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody." - Benjamin Franklin

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.
The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened
to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand."
- Karl Menninger

"Promise you won't forget me, because if I thought you would,
I'd never leave." - A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

"Friends are born, not made." - Henry Adams

"One's friends are that part of the human race with which one
can be human."- George Santayana

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean
the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice,
solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds
with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment
of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and
bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with
us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."- Henri Nouwen

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult
for each other?"- George Eliot

"I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap
for the favor of the kings of the world."- Thomas A. Edison

"The best mirror is an old friend." - George Herbert

"Be courteous to all, but intimate
with few, and let those few be well tried beforeyou give them your confidence. True friendship is a
plant of slow growth, and mustundergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation."- George Washington

"Friendship is one mind in two bodies." - Mencius

"A friend is one who walks in when others walk out" - Walter Winchell

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share
your riches, but to reveal to him, his own." - Benjamin Disraeli

"It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,
A happy and auspicious bird of calm..." - Shelly

"A man
should choose a friend who is better than himself. There are plenty of
acquaintances in the world; but very few real friends." - Chinese Proverb

"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they
can grow separately without growing apart."- Elizabeth Foley

"The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth
to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no
other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?" - Henry David Thoreau

"The better part of one's life consists of his friendships."
- Abraham Lincoln

"Take out the weeds from some wild
spot,
remove each stone that shows,
plant seeds of friendship good and deep,
and tend the plant that grows."- Mary Freeman Startzman

"We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot
survive without human affection."- The 14th Dali Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

"Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a
little."- E.W. Howe

"Friendship is the shadow of the
evening, which strengthens with the setting sun of life."- Jean de La Fontaine

"If a friend is in trouble,
don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something
appropriate and do it." - Edgar Watson Howe

"The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth
its affections to a few esteemed characters." - Thomas Jefferson

"A new friendship is like an unripened fruit - it may become either an orange
or a lemon"- Emma Stacey

"True happiness is of a retired nature, and
an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the
enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and
conversation of a few select companions.- Joseph Addison

"Gardening can be a compelling
cooperative activity.
Your best harvest may be the pleasure you get from working
with family and friends. There's never a shortage of things to
do, no limit to the lessons that can be learned, especially for
children, and there's always plenty of credit to go around,
even for the mistakes." - Steven Wilson

"Too late we learn, a man must hold his friend
Unjudged, accepted, trusted to the end." - John Boyle O'Reilly

"I'd like to be the sort of friend that you have been to me. I'd like to be
the help that you've been always glad to be; I'd like to mean as much to you
each minute of the day, as you have meant, old friend of mine, to me along the
way." - Edgar A. Guest

"A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world."- Leo Buscaglia

"I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say
of them, there would not be four friends in the world."- Blaise Pascal

"Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some
support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship." - Cicero

"Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet
never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends." - Mary Catherwood

"Fear makes strangers of people who would
be friends."- Shirley MacLaine

"Friendship is not friendship without trust, without it I walk alone." - James P. Michels

"But there's more than just solving
the how-to problems. I've often said that if we're going to have a real rural renaissance, I'd just take the solving of the how-to problems for granted. The first thing I'd provide
would be festivals."- Ralph Borsodi

"Friendship with oneself is all-important because without it one cannot be
friends with anyone else in the world." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"One doesn't know, till one is a bit at odds with the world,
how much one's friends who believe in one rather generously, mean to one."- D.H. Lawrence

"My friends are my estate."- Emily Dickinson

"Never refuse any advance of friendship,
for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you."- Madame de Tencin

"Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a
very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success." - Oscar Wilde

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not
born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is
born."- Anais Nin

"It's important to our friends to believe
that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to the friendship that
we are not."- Mignon McLaughlin

"Have no friends not equal to yourself."- Confucius

"The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a
man's success in life." - Edward Everett Hale

"We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to
those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy." - Arthur Ashe

"Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world" - William James

"A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has
gone out."- Grace Pulpit

"Go often to the house of a friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path."- Scandinavian Proverb

"There is magic in the memory of schoolboy friendships; it softens the heart,
and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart." - Bejamin Disraeli

"It isn't kind to cultivate a friendship
just so one will have an audience."- Lawana Blackwell

"Friend - a person known well to another and regarded with liking, affection
and loyalty." - Collins English Dictionary

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends,
the old and the new."- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There are different levels of friendships,
some are half-empty and others are rising and over half-full.
Some information about yourself is
best never shared, not even with friends.
A few friends are just a pain the ass,
and not friends for long.Graveyards and landscape gardens, coffins and flowers -
fitting friends.
Many friendships are sustained by a
mutual hatred of another person or group.
A good friendship is like a two way
paved street, a bad friendship like a one way dirt road coming to a
dead end."
- - By Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions

"Thank you for giving me something no one else could -
yourself." - Heather Lynch

"My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got
five real friends, you've had a great life." - Lee Iacocca

"Most of us don't need a psychiatric therapist as much as a
friend to be silly with." - Robert Brault

"There is magic in long-distance friendships. They let you
relate to other human beings in a way that goes beyond being physically together
and is often more profound."- Diana Cortes

"There is no hope of joy except in human relations." - Antoine de Sainte-Exupery

"The tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their
bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried."- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"The friend within the man is that part of him which belongs
to you and opens to you a door which never, perhaps, is opened to another. Such
a friend is true, and all he says is true; and he loves you even if he hates you
in other mansions of his heart." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"If I had to sum up 'Friendship' in one word, it would be
'Comfort.' "- Terri Guillemets

"A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good,
and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad." - Arnold H. Glasgow

"But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can
speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most
foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort - the
inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh
thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are,
chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest
away."- Dinah Craik

"If I'm in heaven and your not there,
I'd carve your name in golden chairs,
for all the angels there to see,
that I love you and you love me.
If your not there on judgment day,
I'll know you've gone the other way,
so just to prove our love is true,
I'd go to hell to be with you." - Jackie Paul

"A friend to all is a friend to none."- Aristotle

"Friendship is held to be the
severest test of character. It is easy, we think, to be loyal to a family and
clan, whose blood is in your own veins."- Charles Alexander Eastman

"You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool
of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job."- Laurence J. Peter

"Friendship is one mind in two bodies."- Mencius

"Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the
substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of
friendship: it is not worth embalming."- William Hazlitt

"Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud
as romantic partners fall in love."- Letty Cottin Pogrebin

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with
few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."- George Washington

"What joy is better than news of friends?" - Robert Browning

"Friends are like peanut butter and jelly; they always stick
together.
If friends were flowers, I'd pick you.
A best friend is like a four-leaf clover: hard to find, but lucky to have.
You can count your true friends on one hand.
The best thing to do behind a person's back is to pat it.
Shared joy is double joy, shared sorrow is half sorrow.
A friend is a third eye." - Author Unknown or Anonymous or a Proverb